Peripheral devices, such as steering wheel assemblies, sometimes include a peripheral component that has one or more pedals, which are typically operated by a user's foot or feet while the user of the peripheral device is sitting, standing, or otherwise in a position to make contact with the pedal(s) of the peripheral device. As an example of such a peripheral device, some gaming steering wheel peripherals have included a pedal assembly to simulate accelerator, brake, and sometimes clutch pedals of automobiles. However, a recurring and persistent problem with these pedal assemblies is that the peripheral component including the pedal(s) tend to slide or slip on a wide variety of floor surfaces (tile, hardwood, carpet, etc). Some attempts have been made to mitigate this issue, but such attempts appear to be, at best, afterthoughts of the overall design.
For instance, rubber feet have been placed on the bottom of a pedal assembly in order to take advantage of the greater coefficient of friction with respect to certain floor surfaces relative to the material (e.g., plastic) comprising the housing of the pedal assembly. However, rubber feet suffer from the problem that they do not work well on carpeted surfaces, and even for many hard surfaces, they function sub-optimally as well, particularly where dust and the like is likely to accumulate and interfere with the rubber foot to floor contact. Even where rubber feet are attached to a bottom surface of a pedal assembly, the problem is that oftentimes the horizontal component of the force exerted by the user's foot on the pedal assembly's base and/or pedal surfaces becomes greater than the frictional force between the pedal base's rubber feet and the floor/carpeted surface, and the pedal assembly slides away from the user as a result, impacting the user experience significantly.
“Carpet grabbing” barbs or hooks have also been applied to the undersurface of a pedal assembly in order to help mitigate slipping of the pedal assembly on carpeted surfaces. In this regard, carpet grabbing barbs or hooks are intended to work with carpeted surfaces, where the barbs or hooks can engage, or mechanically couple, with the carpet material. However, it has been shown that such barbs or hooks can cause damage to the underlying carpet material in just a short amount of time. Also, carpet grabbing barbs do not work on hard or sheer surfaces where there is no structure into or onto which the grabbing features can hook. Furthermore, some implementations of carpet grabbing barbs or hooks can damage certain hard surfaces (e.g., relatively soft hardwood floors) due to the protruding nature of the hook features.
Facing frustration from not having an integrated feature that solves the sliding and slipping problem, many end-users have devised their own external methods, such as placing a very heavy object (e.g., a cinder block) in front of the pedal assembly, anchoring the pedal assembly in front of a piece of wood against a wall to prevent it from sliding, or securing the pedal assembly to a chair upon which the user sits via a piece of wood or the like that is secured to the chair at one end and to the pedal assembly at the other end. Some users have even resorted to nailing a piece of wood into the floor to prevent slipping of the pedal assembly on the floor surface. Apart from the lack of sophistication of such kluges, such solutions inherently tend to cause damage to the floor, or chair, or even the pedal assembly itself. Accordingly, there is a need in the art of peripheral devices including at least one pedal for an anti-slip mechanism that applies generally to all types of floor surfaces, does not inherently cause damage to floor surfaces (or chairs, or the peripheral device itself), and that is integrated with the pedal assembly from a design standpoint.
Moreover, the pedals for a pedal assembly of a peripheral device, such as a steering wheel peripheral package, are currently constructed with a single spring design in which the force to actuate compression of the spring caused by a user's foot on the pedal is linear with respect to the angle/distance traveled according to the spring constant defined for the spring. However, due to limited effect of such linearity, such single spring designs often do not match the desired user experience for the pedal assembly.
For instance, the feel of a gas pedal, clutch, or brake pedal in a car may lose its sense of realism in game play due to the simple linear haptic feel afforded movement of the pedal. For an example of such loss of realism, a brake pedal in most modem automobiles goes from a light breaking to hard breaking as the pedal is engaged further in a nonlinear fashion. Clearly, such haptic feel of a car brake pedal cannot be duplicated via the single spring model of existing designs. Accordingly, non-linear and/or multiple effects, i.e., changes in force requirements to move a pedal, are desired with respect to the motion of a pedal of a pedal assembly.
Solutions to these and other deficiencies of the state of the art of anti-slipping mechanisms for peripheral devices having at least one pedal are thus desirable.